President Obama

January 21, 2009

An inaugural address, Theodore Sorensen says, "stamps a brand on a new president that can last for years, both nationally and globally, as either a warrior or a peacemaker, a bore or a source of inspiration, as first-rate or mediocre."

No pressure there.

Maybe that explains why Barack Obama seemed unusually somber in the moments before he took the oath of office and spoke to the nation. Only when he was done did he break into that characteristic grin, as if to say, the hard part was over.

Obama, of course, knows the hard part is ahead. That notion dominated this speech, which had more echoes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 than John F. Kennedy in 1961. This was frank talk for America: We have what it takes, but it's time to sober up.

"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood," Obama said. "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age ...

"These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights."

At that moment, it seemed Obama was at risk of channeling a Jimmy Carter-like sense of malaise. But he soared, instead, with an appeal for Americans to respond to this threat with a unity of purpose, to shunt off "petty grievances" and "worn-out dogmas." He offered words that sounded positively mainstream conservative: "It has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom."

Those words touched on one of the unanswered questions of the Obama administration. Will it have more faith in government than in the risk-takers and makers of things? Will it allow them to lead the return to prosperity and reap the rewards of their entrepreneurship and hard work?

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History may decide differently, but at first blush there was no phrase in this speech that will be timeless. No "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself ..." No "ask not what your country can do for you ... " (To this day Sorensen won't reveal whether that phrase was conceived by Kennedy or him. He destroyed his first draft of the Kennedy inaugural address.)

But in tone and substance, Obama delivered what the country needed to hear from its new president. A promise of accountability. A call for a new era of responsibility. A recognition of duty. A deep sense of the nation's traditions and its once and future greatness.

Every inauguration of a new president is momentous, a wondrous reminder that we live in the most enduring democracy and freest society on Earth.

And yet this one was different, for no inauguration has prompted such a swelling of personal pride, such great, huge sobs of joy, as the inauguration of this first African-American president, this man from Illinois. We've sent our very best to Washington. President Barack Obama.